Contents

History

The founder of biogeochemistry was Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky whose 1926 book The Biosphere,[1] in the tradition of Mendeleev, formulated a physics of the earth as a living whole. Vernadsky distinguished three spheres, where a sphere was a concept similar to the Riemman concept of a space-phase. He observed that each sphere had its own laws of evolution, and that the higher spheres modified and dominated the lower:

Human activities (e.g., agriculture and industry) modify the Biosphere and Abiotic sphere. In the contemporary environment, the amount of influence humans have on the other two spheres is comparable to a geological force (see Anthropocene).

Early development

The American limnologist and geochemistG. Evelyn Hutchinson is credited with outlining the broad scope and principles of this new field. More recently, the basic elements of the discipline of biogeochemistry were restated and popularized by the British scientist and writer, James Lovelock, under the label of the Gaia Hypothesis. Lovelock emphasizes a concept that life processes regulate the Earth through feedback mechanisms to keep it habitable.